


For as long as the sun won't rise

by laughingpineapple



Category: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Injury Recovery, M/M, Resolved Long-Standing Pining, background Jowd/Alma/Cabanela, chapter 16 divergence, no reset
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-24 18:27:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17105852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingpineapple/pseuds/laughingpineapple
Summary: In which Cabanela gets to live the future he fought for, give or take an explosion and a knit hat to the face, and it feels like the night never ended.





	For as long as the sun won't rise

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Siver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siver/gifts).



“It's like adopting a greyhound,” Jowd comments as he lifts Cabanela, careful not to strain his cast and stitches. “From racing champ to couch potato. Legs everywhere.” He rests him on the pillow of the minimalist monstrosity that passes for a couch in his friend's flat, tucks his legs under a blanket and sits down beside him. The thing is not uncomfortable, but it manages to look pristine with two grown men sitting on it and that's just unnatural, not unlike how the rest of the flat seems to actively ignore the human presence of Jowd and Kamila crashing there indefinitely. Spotless and white alright, the man stays on brand. Looking at the sleek black aluminium line that cuts the wall in half and functions as a sparsely populated bookshelf, Jowd has to wonder about his old friend's interior design leanings. Either they intentionally fall back into the least homey style known to man or if he just never hung around the place enough to notice. Certainly not in the past five years. With a pang of guilt, Jowd wraps an arm around him and keeps him close. He thinks of fifteen ways of saying sorry, but none of them stick.

“'m not retired, baby. Not quiiite yet.”

“Right you are. Fresh as a daisy.”

Cabanela nods - that's the gods-given truth, painkillers are but a brief inconvenience, broken bones just a divergence of opinion. He drops his head on Jowd's chest, shifting around until he finds a comfortable spot, snorts and falls asleep to the comforting rhythm of his heartbeat.

 

Cabanela sleeps a lot these days, as the doctors said he would, reassuring Jowd that it would be very good for his recovery (they said that nothing could pull off a miracle given the sorry state he was in when he was brought to the ER, but then again they also said that the patient's willpower could make a difference, so Jowd filed it away as “prognosis unclear; stick by him and see what happens”, which is the only option with Cabanela, really). What they did not say is what all this time to himself would do to Jowd. Out of all the very urgent and very real preoccupations that came with going back to living a life outside of solitary confinement, his thoughts keep circling back to Cabanela. Like picking a scab, he figures. It hurts just the right amount.

His memories of life before jail - that's how he sets the distinction to himself, “before jail”, as “before Alma's death” is an unhealed wound that only festered as he neglected it - are too much of a blur to trust them. Still, Cabanela's unwavering devotion towers before Jowd like a colossal monolith that he struggles to place in any point of their past without having it dominate the horizon. Was it there when they got their badges? Did his friend check that baggage at the door when they went out for drinks? Was one of them a consummate actor, or the other one a simple fool? Did Alma know?

Did Alma know?

Jowd did not. For such a capable detective, Sissel would say, you missed what was right in front of your nose. But Sissel isn't here with them, lost along with the Yonoa and the manipulator, and valiant Missile, they lost so many - not Kamila nor Lynne or he wouldn't have had the strength to make it back to shore. The ocean calls sometimes. A different tomb. It's not that easy to let go anymore, though, so he keeps to the dry land. He brushes Cabanela's hair and his hand lingers, cupping his head, in no rush to break that connection after a geological age spent in isolation. He didn't know what to think when this impossible man was the first person he saw outside the prison, brighter than the moon above their heads and just as unreadable. When he finally did get a read on him, or the broken pile of limbs that was left of him by then, and found him simple, and radiant, and full of love, and dying, he remembers - such a distinct memory among the unrelenting confusion of the night - that he felt like kissing him. If they'd had the time, if the packed peanut gallery (ghostly and otherwise) hadn't been there, if he could have been certain it wasn't just his loneliness doing the thinking for him, nor his guilt. As the weeks turn to months, he's still not too sure about those, but if that is the case, loneliness and guilt do make for some compelling thinking, and Jowd's followed worse impulses.

Cabanela, having long since developed a keen sixth sense to know when he is being stared at, opens an eyelid to meet Jowd's gaze.

“Mooornin’,” he mutters, and it's five in the afternoon and Jowd is lost in a distant night and it's suddenly the funniest thing in the world. Snap out of it. Did Alma know? Jowd buries it all under a laughter and goes about his day.

 

“A geeenerous present.”

“ _ This _ is generous?” Jowd's frown goes from the man who gave him five years of his life on a silver platter (and his home to boot, and his health, and so much love it's terrifying) to a long strip of fabric and back to the man again. “Cabanela, this is a scarf.”

A continuous strip of red fabric twice a man's height - twice this particular man's height, which is considerable - like the one he used to wear, no seams, pure wool. They don't sell them like this, as Cabanela knows all too well and Jowd found out last week - in hindsight, he should have figured that everything about him was one of a kind. So he got one made. “Thank you! Sorry for the explosion,” says the cheerful greeting card, not that the explosion was Jowd's fault, per se, but he felt like erring on the side of caution. Cabanela discards it with a fond sigh and now discovers that his new scarf is some six inches longer than the old one, making it impossible to just drape it across his shoulders for dramatic effect and call it a day. Jowd makes a gesture like  _ try wrapping it around your neck, you know, like a scarf _ . Cabanela scoffs but complies.

“It will take longer for the coat.” Jowd meticulously wraps another coil of red wool around Cabanela's neck, can't risk pneumonia on top of everything else. “You're unmarred, anyway.” Spotless, no need to parade it around.

Cabanela turns around to look at Jowd and he's burning again, with the fiery composure of a man who doesn't regret a godsdamn thing, beautiful like he was on that night. “ _ I know _ .”

“I know you do.” Jowd catches his breath.

 

“I miss her, baby.”

“Me too.”

The TV's chatter covers all they can't say.

 

He may be falling for this man. He forgot how to fall for people, how to be with people. Maybe he never knew. People are fake, people can't be relied on. Not this one. He's seen this by now. Not this one.

It takes a bit of alcohol, not too much or in truth not at all as Jowd's no lightweight, just enough for plausible self-deniability. The story is, they're sitting in front of the TV again on their second beer for the evening and the blue light of the screen is painting new shades on Cabanela's skin when Jowd excuses himself for a shower, the movie is nothing to write home about anyway or he hasn't been paying attention. As cold water trickles down his body, he keeps going back to the deep ocean blue framing the sharp lines of his cheekbones and outlining the curve of his nose.

Jowd goes back. To fetch his beer, nominally, before it gets warm. Fresh out of the shower, all he is wearing is a towel around his waist; he can barely see under the unruly mass of wet hair but Cabanela's undivided attention hits so hard it prickles his skin. He says something, anything, a quick joke about the movie and its unsatisfying clump of underwater explosions, to get an excuse to stand there and let his old friend watch. Transfixed is a good look on Cabanela, neck craned forward aching for more, and there is something to be said for having the power to crack his perfect shield of determined self restraint.

 

So Jowd lets him stew for one more week. Long past the alcohol. Deniability as plausible as a flock of cherubic, rotund flying pigs.

 

Couch again - Cabanela is getting used to hopping around on crutches with far more zest than the instrument should allow, but he's still short on stamina and will soon deflate back to the first available comfy surface. Jowd makes a point of being that rest for him, last but not least because of the man's stubborn refusal to spice up his living room with something as decadent as a couple of pillows. If it weren't for the monastic austerity of the rest of the flat, one might even suspect him of keeping his couch bare on purpose, so he will have nothing but Jowd to sprawl himself on. Which works just fine for Jowd, incidentally. It keeps happening that Cabanela is resting on his lap, head on his chest as if he had gotten addicted to his heartbeat. Jowd casually runs a hand along Cabanela's legs, or as far as he can make it, long as they are, and Cabanela muffles a sigh.

“What was that?”

“Taaalkin’ to myself.”

“I wouldn't mind listening in.”

He lifts him up, wrapping his arms close around Cabanela's chest and feeling for all intents and purposes like he, the immovable object to the other's unstoppable force, has been cracked open in the collision. There's so much tenderness in Cabanela's smile as their foreheads touch - and a hint of triumph, because of course the unwavering bastard had expected no less in the long run.

“Jowd…” he sighs again.

“That's better.”

Kissing him feels right. Desperate on Cabanela’s part, digging his fingers in Jowd's beard and never letting go. Jowd cannot say he understands that desperation, but it feels right. It feels like home to a man who lost his. It's where he wants to be. Where life has left them, the two of them alone at the bottom of five years and months to spare of sinking to the depths. He's just sorry it took this long. Sorry there was nothing better he could do. If the manipulator were to re-emerge tomorrow and burn the whole country down in flames, they would still have this.

 

For a while, they do.

The night is long. Summer turns to fall.

 

“ _ Found him _ .”

Cabanela slams down the phone and throws himself at his crutches; his sense of space and movement has not changed, he would've been fine, but Jowd catches him anyway, like a cat stretched mid-jump. The urgency makes Jowd shiver and he holds him close. Something is ending.

“Found what, Cabanela. What have you…”

“Sissel. They found Sissel.”

And he's already staring at that future, strained toward the goal he's cultivated in secret, in the dark of whispered phone calls and old favours called in. Jowd can see now the fire that has kept him going, he can discern the outline of a daring frame made of the Prof's studies on the meteor, Sissel's powers, a death still frozen in time… white coat glistening in the afternoon sun, Cabanela is already outside the door, waiting for him.

“Our way back.”

 


End file.
